When you play a video game, you expect be able to use your skills as a gamer to beat whatever challenges the game throws at you. If the challenges require a lot of skill, the game is hard to win. If it doesn't require much skill, it should be an easy game. However, some games that should be relatively easy are actually quite hard. It could be due to shoddy programming, a Game-Breaking Bug, poor implementation of gameplay elements or time constraints, or the developers threw in something which makes the game harder, but which has nothing to do with the player's or AI's skills. This is fake difficulty.

Bad technical aspects make it difficult. Making a difficult jump is a real difficulty. Making a same difficult jump with overly complex controls, bad jumping physics, or an abrupt mid-air change of camera angle - and therefore the orientation of your controls - is fake difficulty.

Denial of information critical to progress. A reasonable game may require the player to use information, clues, or logic to proceed. Withholding relevant information such that the player cannot possibly win without a guide, walkthrough or trial and error is fake difficulty. Also includes hidden Unstable Equilibrium (e.g. a later level is much harder if you do badly at an early level, and you're not informed of this ahead of time). In a 2D game with no camera control, hiding important details behind foreground elements or Behind the Black counts as fake difficulty if your character shouldbe able to see them.

The outcome of the game is influenced by decisions that were uninformed at the time and cannot be undone. (Unless the game is heavily story-based and unforeseen consequences of actions undertaken with incomplete information are legitimate plot elements, or the game offers some way of mitigating or eliminating those consequences.) A game that offers a Joke Character and is clear about the character's weakness has real difficulty. A game that disguises a joke character as a real one has fake difficulty.

The game requires the player to use skills or knowledge that are either incorrect or have nothing to do with the genre. A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played for a power-up is real difficulty. A football game that requires you to describe the position that Jerry Rice played to get a powerup, and assumes the answer is "Quarterback", or one that forces you to do multi-variable calculus in order to train your starting lineup is fake difficulty, not to mention just plain silly. (Even if that last one would arguably be kind of cool.)

It is important to note that just because a gameplay feature is annoying and frustrating does not make it fake difficulty. For example, placing a large number of invincible minor minions between the player and the Plot Coupon is extremely annoying, but they can be avoided by skilled movement - thus, the difficulty is real.

Fake or Artificial difficulty is sometimes used to refer to the raising of enemy stats without improving their AI or giving them new abilities. However, raising enemy stats may force the player to devise new strategies or execute their inputs with less errors. Trial and error and reattempting sections of a game are a natural part of most games, and only excessive or ridiculous examples of trial and error should be considered "fake". Also, difficulty is a measurable statistic that can be categorized into different player skills. Thus the term "fake" difficulty is a matter of opinion which can change from player to player, depending on which forms of difficulty they like or dislike.

Denial of critical information

All There in the ManualIf you don't know how to do a Shoryuken because you didn't read the manual, that's just you being lazy, not Fake Difficulty. This is for games which refer to plot elements or instructions that are only in ANOTHER game's manual which you haven't purchased yet.

Depth PerplexionIf objects that reside in the "background" layer can still kill you by Collision Damage. In isometric views, it's hard to tell what's blocking you or what's safe to land on. Your bullets are blocked by walls, enemy bullets don't have that problem.

Hitbox DissonanceWhere the area around a character/enemy that registers hits doesn't match up with the actual appearance of the character/enemy – the game registers hits that don't visually connect, or fails to acknowledge hits that do.

Leap of FaithA hole in a platform game which, despite appearances, is not bottomless. The only way to find out is to jump in!

MetagameWhen joining an online game, there are a lot of unwritten rules that fellow players expect you to know that the in-game tutorials do not explain. Worst-case, the single-player game is patched to be harder, with the expectations that players will use unwritten exploits.

You Can't Get Ye FlaskWhere the text parser in old Adventure Games can't understand what you're telling it. Especially if you're telling it something that's really common vocabulary and should be comprehensible to the average programmer.

Character Select ForcingWhere the game designs levels or enemies to only be beatable by a particular character or set of characters and doesn't require or at least hint at which characters you need to pick at the outset. Some older D&D modules that require a certain character class's abilities in order to advance the plot (but doesn't force a member of the party to be one at the outset) are like this.

Lost ForeverA "missable" item which, if you didn't get it on your first chance, will be unobtainable afterwards. Doubly frustrating if it's a very powerful item that will aid the quest, and sure to cause a lot of frustration if it's a key item, primarily required for the best ending. Extremely likely to cause controller-tossing if it's a key item required to getanyending at all. If the Non Standard Game Over screen/cinematic lets you know what you missed for your next go-around, then the Fake Difficulty of the situation is slightly lessened. It'd still be better if they told you about it before it was Lost Forever, though.

UnwinnableA gameplay state in which it is completely impossible for the player to finish the game.

Unwinnable by DesignA gameplay design element that in the future will prevent the player from winning, but the player may not be informed of this until hours after it happened.

Unwinnable by MistakeEither a bug or an oversight has rendered the game broken so there's no way for it to tell the player how screwed they are.

Requires or rewards counter-intuitive or irrelevant behavior or skill from the player to continue the game

Bladder of SteelIf the Pause button doesn't apply to cutscenes. Have to go to the bathroom or answer the phone? Hope you don't miss the NPC giving you the secret combination to defuse that ticking bomb...

Conviction by Counterfactual ClueA game's solution requires an answer that is blatantly incorrect in the real world, causing players with the true answer to get stuck at the puzzle.

Empty LevelsWhere the stat gains from gaining levels aren't enough to beat the new, stronger wave of enemies that attack higher-level characters. This is only fake difficulty if it's possible to avoid gaining levels in the first place (and thereby enjoy the artificially lowered difficulty now or at a later date) otherwise it's just a game with a Parabolic Power Curve.

Unexpected Gameplay Change in more extreme cases What the—why is this Visual Novel suddenly making me play a rhythm game? I only have one arm, man, that's why I picked up the slow-paced game instead of one of those!

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